Pages

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Joanna Rutkowska has announced the release of Qubes
OS 1.0, a Fedora-based security distribution for the desktop with a
number of isolated domains implemented as lightweight virtual machines
running under Xen: "After nearly three years of
work, I have a pleasure to announce that Qubes OS 1.0 has finally been
released. Qubes OS is an advanced tool for implementing security by
isolation on your desktop, using domains implemented as lightweight Xen
virtual machines. It tries to marry two contradictory goals: how to make
the isolation between domains as strong as possible, mainly due to
clever architecture that minimizes the amount of trusted code, and how
to make this isolation as seamless and easy as possible. Again, how the
user is going to take advantage of this isolation is totally left up to
the user." Read the release announcement and visit the project's security goals page to learn more. Download: Qubes-R1-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,668MB, torrent).

François Dupoux has announced the release of SystemRescueCd 3.0.0, a live CD containing a large number of data rescue and disk management utilities, based on Gentoo Linux. What's new? "Added
support for loading extra SRM module files (System Rescue Modules);
added support for UEFI booting from the CD-ROM on x86_64 using GRUB 2.00
(efi.img); updated standard kernels to long-term supported Linux kernel
3.2.28 (rescuecd + rescue64); updated alternative kernels to long-term
supported Linux kernel 3.4.9 (altker32 + altker64); the rescuecd kernel
image has been renamed rescue32 for better consistency; configured
isolinux to automatically use the 64-bit kernel if CPU is capable;
automatically use 64-bit version of FSArchiver and memtester if CPU is
capable; reorganized and updated isolinux configuration and help
messages; updated e2fsprogs to 1.42.5, GParted to 0.13.1, Partclone to
0.2.50." Here is the complete changelog. Download: systemrescuecd-x86-3.0.0.iso (347MB, MD5).

A quick tip for Chromium users who are using Ubuntu 12.04: the Chromium PPAs
(Stable, Beta, Dev and Daily) haven't been updated since Chromium 18
but if you want to use the latest Chromium browser in Ubuntu, there are
two new PPAs you can use, thanks to Alex Shkop.

The two Chromium
PPAs are for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin only for now, one for the
latest stable Chromium (version 21) and one for the development builds
(version 23 at the time I'm writing this post).

Add the stable PPA and install Chromium in Ubuntu 12.04 using the following commands:

According to the recent report published by IDC
this week, worldwide server market
revenues decreased 4.8 percent year-over-year in Q2 2012. This is the
third consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue declines for the
server market. The market is "working its way through a number of
technology
transitions impacting customer demand for x86, Unix and mainframe-class
systems," said Matt Eastwood, group vice president and general manager
for enterprise platforms at IDC, in a released statement. "Economic
uncertainty is weighing on the market and the sales cycle is
lengthening."